FREE USE in Primitive World

The sheer impact of Bruga’s attack had rattled his skeletal frame down to his boots. And unfortunately, that was the brutal, reality of fighting a bona fide Layer 4 warlord.

Layer 4 was not merely a numerical step up from Layer 3; it was the exact boundary where an organic being underwent a fundamental evolution of power.

Unlike Layer 3 practitioners who could only push their internal essence outward in brief, volatile bursts, a true Layer 4 powerhouse could use their internal essence as catalysts and control the essence floating around in the surrounding world.

So, they didn’t just use their own power... they seized the ambient atmospheric essence, and used it to strengthen their bodies too.

Thanks to that and him being a Gray Marauder, Bruga’s skin had become a dense leather even stronger than many beasts known for defense and his muscles held the structural density of solid ironwood.

Still....

Thank whatever dark gods are watching that this brute is a Gray Marauder, Sol calculated his mind running hyper-threaded combat simulations in fractions of a second. Marauders rely on raw, mutated physical evolution and atmospheric essence-compression.

He doesn’t manifest a true spiritual entity like Veylara or Thauren. If this giant had an ethereal spirit-beast guarding his blind spots while throwing Layer 4 physical punches, I’d already be a red stain on these stones.

”STILL BREATHING, LITTLE FLEA?!” Bruga bellowed, his voice vibrating like an iron gong.

Sol didn’t bother offering a verbal retort.

SQUELCH.

Directly beneath his boots lay the crushed, ruined remains of the Marauder warriors he had crashed into. Their shattered chest cavities and torn arteries were still pumping fresh, hot life force into the air.

Sol didn’t hesitate. He opened his chest hollow wide, unleashing his,ravenous soul-siphon power.

Invisible, glowing crimson tendrils shot out from Sol’s black armor, plunging like parasitic tendrils directly into the corpses beneath him.

The lingering, unspent soul-essence of Marauders was violently ripped from their dying flesh and drawn straight into Sol’s hollow chest.

FZZZZZZT!

The reaction inside his body was intoxicating. The hot, harvested soul energy acted like liquid iron, coursing through his damaged essence pathways, sealing the fractures in his forearms, soothing the grinding agony in his arm bones, and dampening the violent tremors in his muscles.

Sol slowly pushed himself up to a full stand. The trembling in his hands ceased completely. His posture straightened, immovable and terrifying.

By now Burga had reached close to him.

”DIE, FLEA! DIE!” Bruga roared, unleashing a rapid-fire flurry of titanic punches.

Each fist, larger than a car, punched through the air wrapped in a thick, slate-grey shock of compressed essence.

Sol danced on the thin edge of oblivion.

The battle was a terrifying, adrenaline-soaked blur of micro-evasions.

He ducked under a flying fist that shattered a ten-foot limestone stone behind him into powder, vaulted off the knuckles of a sweeping left hook, and banked hard in mid-air to avoid a crushing foot-stomp.

The atmospheric pressure alone felt like heavy iron plates hammering against Sol’s chest, making every breath taste of copper and burning ozone.

In that exact split-second, as the cloud of limestone exploded around him, Sol didn’t retreat. He caught a flying piece of stone mid-air. Spinning on his heel, Sol leveraged his full rotational momentum and hurled the heavy stone straight at Bruga’s open eyes!

WHIRL!

The stone cut through the air like a heavy boomerang. Bruga, caught mid-follow-through from his massive punch, was forced to snap his head back to avoid blinding himself.

The heavy stone struck the side of his jaw with a loud CLANG!, snapping his head sideways and leaving a deep, purple bruise across his cheekbone.

It didn’t cause critical damage, but it succeeded in doing something far more vital: it broke Bruga’s balance and disrupted his stance.

Before the giant could recover his center of gravity, Sol was already moving. He slid under Bruga’s wide stance, using Zeyra’s silver daggers to slice cleanly through the giant’s left thigh.

RIP!

It cut through his skin, exposing the raw muscle beneath.

”PEST!” Bruga snarled, stomping his bare heel down with enough force to create a five-foot crater in the limestone.

Sol was already gone. He kicked off a rising boulder fragment, Vaulting fifteen feet into the air directly above Bruga’s head.

But Before Sol could adjust his center of gravity, Bruga reacted even faster.

Despite his colossal frame, the giant moved with sickening, unnatural burst-speed. He closed the gap in a single, terrifying leap, his shadow completely blotting out the harsh sun above Sol.

”IN THE AIR! YOU HAVE NO FOOTING!” Bruga roared, bringing both of his massive, iron-hard palms together in a mid-air clapping strike designed to pancake Sol into bloody jelly.

”Footing is for amateurs!” Sol snarled beneath his breath.

In mid-air, Sol’s neon-crimson eyes locked onto a still flying stone... a chunk of the cliff face launched into the air by Bruga’s previous punch.

Sol extended a thin, razor-wire thread of essence from his left palm, anchoring it instantly into the floating boulder.

He yanked hard. Instead of pulling the massive rock toward him, Sol pulled his own lightened body toward the rock!

His body zittered sideways through the air like a glitching optic signal.

BANG!

Bruga’s massive palms slammed together with an ear-splitting atmospheric implosion, compressing the air where Sol had been a microsecond prior into a visible shock-ring.

The sonic boom ripped through the valley, knocking several Coalition soldiers flat onto their faces.

Sol slammed his boots onto the floating boulder, using it as a temporary springboard.

BOOM!

He drove his legs down with absolute force, shattering the floating rock into gravel while launching himself straight down toward Bruga’s exposed collarbone.

Zeyra’s twin silver daggers flashed in a blinding, downward double-stab.

SLASH!

Sparks erupted as the daggers bit into Bruga’s shoulder. Sol channeled every bit of kinetic momentum into the strike, dragging the silver blades down the giant’s chest, cutting twin three-foot gashes through his tough, grey hide.

Dark blood squirted into the air, splashing across Sol’s body.